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The University of Freedom
Ciaran Quinn, Sinn Féin’s North American representative, reviews Laurence McKeown’s recently published memoir, And Flowers Grew Up Through the Concrete: A Prison Memoir 1981—1992. -oo0oo- THERE is a t-shirt in the Sinn Féin Shop in Dublin with a silhouette of the...
‘A Bright Star’ by Tony O’Hara
A well-known prison poem, ‘A Bright Star’, authorship attributed to Bobby Sands for many decades, was actually written by another blanket man, Tony ‘Scatter’ O’Hara from Derry, whose brother Patsy, an INLA Volunteer, died on the 1981 hunger strike. Back in 1980,...
Prison Literature 2025
‘2025 has been an important year for those who devour prison and former prisoner writings,’ says Eoghan ‘Gino’ Mac Cormaic who served fifteen years in jail, including five years on the blanket. In this feature he casts his eye over publications produced by former...
Irish Solidarity with Palestine Action Hunger Strikers
Solidarity actions in Ireland in support of the Palestine Action prisoners in England have continued—the latest being a picket by several hundred people on the Andersonstown Road, Belfast, demanding that the British government intervene and meet with the prisoners’...
Support the Hunger Strikers
Political prisoners in a number of British prisons—Teuta Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, Qesser Zurah, Amu Gibb, Heba Muraisi, and Jon Cink—are now in the third week of a hunger strike. They have been imprisoned in relation to the campaign by Palestine Action to highlight the...
Anniversary of Joe McDonnell’s Death
Today marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the fifth hunger striker to die, Joe McDonnell. Below we link to a documentary by Ocean FM about Joe’s death which won the Silver Award in the prestigious International New York Festivals Radio Awards in 2022. The...
Statue For ‘Marcella’
ON THE EVE of the death of Bobby Sands forty-four years ago tomorrow, a huge number of former prisoners and comrades, and over a thousand republican supporters, gathered at Twinbrook, Belfast, for the unveiling of a statue in honour of Bobby and those who died in the...
Monsignor Raymond Murray—A Tribute
Of all the northern prison chaplains throughout our most recent conflict the cleric closest to the women prisoners in Armagh was the human rights campaigner Fr Raymond Murray, who died at the age of eighty-six last month. He was a chaplain to the prison from 1967...
Tributes to Bik McFarlane
The funeral took place of Brendan 'Bik' McFarlane on Tuesday, 25 February. Mourners, including many former prisoners, Sinn Féin TDs and MPs and Belfast City Councillors, and others who had travelled great distances, gathered outside his home just off the Cliftonville...
Death of Dafydd Elis-Thomas
The Bobby Sands Trust has extended sympathy to the family of Dafydd Elis-Thomas, former leader of Plaid Cymru and MP who became a member of the House of Lords in 1992, and who died on 7 February. His funeral will be held at Llandaf Cathedral, Cardiff on Friday...
